WHY I WROTE A FAKE HAKIM BEY BOOK
AND HOW I CHEATED THE CONFORMISTS OF ITALIAN
"COUNTERCULTURE"

by Luther Blissett

A. The wonders of creation

...In order to get on and improve the relations
between the masses and the leaders, we must keep the valve of
self-criticism open, we must enable the soviet men to scold their
leaders and criticize their failures, so that the leaders do not
become presumptuous and the masses do not leave the leaders.

Josif Stalin, 1923

Since last April all good Italian bookshops are selling A Ruota
Libera - Miseria del lettore di TAZ [more or less: "Loose
from all restraint - On the poverty of the TAZ readership"],
a collection of pieces by Hakim Bey published
by Castelvecchi (Rome). Multitudes of fans of that notorious guru
of 1990's counterculture bought the book (which has quickly sold
out). The left-wing press reviewed it enthusiastically. Concurrent
publishers have gone off their nuts and charged the publisher
and the editor/translator (the mysterious Fabrizio P. Belletati
- born in Caserta 1969, now living in Nottingham, UK) with "uncorrectness"
for having copyrighted "texts freely circulating on the Net".
None realized that A Ruota Libera is apocryphal, nay, no more
euphemisms!, it is FAKE.

"Fabrizio P. Belletati" doesn't exist. I, Luther Blissett,
wrote A Ruota Libera. It is not a mere parody of Beyan writings,
rather, it's been a way of testing how gullible and tardy is the
average buyer and/or reviewer of cyber-crap, and how believable
is the output of an overestimated "santon" whose anal
orifice, just as anybody's butthole, spouts ordinary shit instead
of gold.

A Ruota Libera includes:

# A preface by "Belletati". ('This book is a selection
of articles and essays by Hakim Bey, written during the period
1993-95, previously untranslated into Italian [...] Why have I
"invented" for the Italian market a book that does not
yet exist in the USA? Maybe I had to wait for the author himself
to improve and collect his writings, didn't I? As always, the
reason is one of the several "Italian" anomalies, i.e.
the surprising untimeliness of Bey's critical success in Italy
[...] Shortly before, during and immediately after the publication
of TAZ...Hakim Bey was actually without interlocutors: the reviews
of his major theoretical work were marked by an uproarious "greed
for novelties" and a passive admiration of Bey's syncretic
acrobatics. The main result was a depressing banalization of his
positions, which in many ways were mistaken for those "cyber-gnostic"
ideas which Bey explicitly detests. Bey appears to be the first
person to complain about these foolishly new-agey or pseudo-cyberpunk
interpretations [...] Luckily enough, this trend has recently
been inverted. An useful, indeed indispensable critique of Bey's
theories is revealing itself and retro-acting on his latest texts
[... quick overview of the things written by John Zerzan, the
Neoist Alliance, the London Psychogeographical Association and
the Berlin-based magazine Super! Bierfront...] Apparently, this
is only the beginning: Hakim Bey is no longer so awfully trendy,
he isn't deemed as an untouchable santon any longer. This doesn't
mean that his bias on the countercultural debate is going to end;
rather, the understanding of his next pieces will be easier than
before, also thanks to the rudiments of "immediatist self-criticism"
which he is inserting. And as to Italy? Here is necessary to bring
the debate up-to-date, because we're still facing the long rambling
speech on the TAZs: "Geez, this party really seems to be
a TAZ!", "Hey, won't you come down at the TAZ in the
squatted centre?"...That's why I decided to publish these
texts... which provide us with a complete picture of Bey's theories,
here and now, without enervating and useless waits.')

# A few lark-mirrors, i.e. true and "serious" (as
well as questionable) Bey's texts: "PAZ", "Media
Creed For The Fin De Siecle", "Primitives & Extropians".

# Some interesting (as well as questionable) apocrypha, things
that Bey would write if his ideas were clear enough:

a) "Fart Strike", in which "Bey" suddenly
changes his (banally pro-situationist) position on art and the
Art Strike 1990 -'93;

b) "Albigensis Postscript", actually "A Conspectus
On The Evolution Of Cyberspace", a text by the London Psychogeographical
Association, with such ludicrous inserts as a reference to one
Lee Mortais (which sounds like "Li Mortè!!!" [...your
deads!], i.e. a Roman insult meaning "[Fuck] the souls of
your dead parents!") as well as a mega-stupid final roller-coaster
ride;

c) "On The Poverty Of The TAZ Readership", which
does not break the promise of its title. Since I imitated the
style of Italian translations of Bey's writings, any translation
"back" into English would betray the text. It's a pity.
Anyway, the piece is a radical critique of Bey's fans.

# Apocryphal crap, indifferently swallowed by the readers,
which proves that the "new underground" conformist posers
would believe anything:

a) "An Immediatist Self-criticism" (actually a 1926
Stalin's speech, which I had slightly altered without softening
its arrogant, authoritative tone);

b) An appendix to "Evil Eye" entitled "Toccarsi
le palle" [Touching One's Own Balls], which I couldn't comment
without getting sick of my own laughters!

c) "Outdated Media", i.e. a hasty critique to the
Internet which culminates in a ludicrous yearning for the good
old smoke signals and carrier-pigeons;

# A real piece by John Zerzan, 'Hakim Bey, Postmodern "Anarchist"'.

In one word, a crapbook.

I parodized Bey's style (which is one part Hippy bullshit and
cheap oriental trinkets, one part post-Structuralism and pithily
intricacies, one part cyber-crap), forced its ambiguity, made
use of any banal rethoric expedient. I also stuffed the texts
with fake translator's notes (pointing out various untranslatable
puns) and persian and arabian words. At last, I created "Fabrizio
P. Belletati", who sent all the stuff to Castelvecchi. Castelvecchi
deemed the texts as "extremely disputable, but worth publishing"
(not too bad if Luther cheated even one of his/her publishers
and spokesmen: not even Gerry Adams knew that the IRA was going
to explode the Canary Wharf bomb!). As an ultimate hoax, I copyrighted
the texts - Italian "translations" of unexisting anti-copyright
English texts. Eventually the book has been published and positively
reviewed, the prank was successful. As a side effect, the entire
operation raised panic in the "underground" scene.

B. It's the press, baby!

A "white radical" is three parts
bullshit and one part hesitation.

Up Against The Wall Motherfucker, 1968

The left-wing press welcomed A Ruota Libera with fanfares and
flourishing trumpets. On Friday, April 26th B.V. (Benedetto Vecchi)
reviewed the book on "Il Manifesto" (whose heading contains
the phrase "communist newspaper") and published several
excerpts from "Media Creed For The Fin de Siecle". Here
is the end of B.V.'s masterpiece, which was entitled: 'Hakim Bey:
Self-consciousness of the "underground" scene' : "...This
Bey's book published by Castelvecchi replies to fans and detractors.
Bey's provocations are the right way to take a different look
at this 'too-late-Capitalism', which is how he describes the post-modern
age. A book worth devouring, thanks also to Belletati's introduction,
which describes in details what happens to that jovial Sufi master".

***

A few weeks later, Angelo Quattrocchi fell in the pseudo-Bey
ambush. Quattrocchi [his surname means "4 eyes"] is
a boring old guy who can't help yearning for May '68, and boasts
of having taken supper with Guy Debord
(as if this was a honour). This dotard wrote some useless anti-media
pamphlets such as Come e perché difendersi dalla televisione
[How And Why We Defend Ourselves From TV] (1988) and Dai... Stacca
la spina! [Come On, Take The Plug Off!] (1996); he's proud of
not having a TV set, a fax or an Internet access, and yet this
disinformed moron writes articles on "counterculture"
on "Liberazione", the organ of the PRC [Re-founded Communist
Party, that is a powerful trotsko-stalinist monster]. On May 29th,
Quattrocchi wrote this meaningless and ungrammatical review:

SONS OF SITUATIONISM DEMOLISH EACH OTHER

Hakim Bey, "A Ruota Libera", Castelvecchi, lire
14.000

Hakim Bey, Sufi master or bastard nephew of Vaneigem, the
father of Situationism, is still a lovely theoretician-antitheoretician
of libertarian radicalism thought and lived in this age. TAZ
was published in Italian by Shake in 1993, then they published
"Via Radio: Saggi sull'Immediatismo" [Radio Sermonettes/Immediatism].
Now another collection of Bey's writings, A Ruota Libera, is
out thanks to quick and multi-coloured Castelvecchi. O, it's
a funny, brilliant, delicious book, though there are some style
drops! As to radical thought, it takes us on the same time wave
of the US, which is where Bey writes, and Germany, where Bey
is as famous as in Italy. The book has an incredible appendix,
a 3-page mycrocosm in which John Zorzan [sic], another brilliant
writer of the same school, demolishes our Bey by describing him
as perfect mega-trendy blah-blah poseur, a sort of post-modern
anarchist. Zorzan [sic] has published for Nautilus another lovely
text, "Apprezzare il tempo" [Time And Its Discontents].
Who's right? Zorzan [sic] or Hakim Bey? Both. They both foam
with a critical intelligence that leaves all the other "libertarians"
amidst the ruins of an ideological wall which they haven't yet
removed. Zorzan [sic] and Bey are both bastard sons of gran pere
Vaneigem, the Situationist philosopher whose "Treatise..."
throws light on this fin de siecle since 1968. This end of the
century sees anarchy and utopia rising again from the ashes of
ideologies. They [Bey and Zorzan] talk about temporary autonomous
zones, that is a conquest of space (squats) and time (raves?
Altered states of consciousness?), which subjectivities want
to take over. This is the only weapon left against the omnipotence
and omnipresence of capital, it is worth reading and living.
Again, ce n'est qu'un debut.

A storm of turd. It's piteous to see how a life without TV
can reduce an educated man. Vaneigem is NOT "the father of
Situationism": the Situationist International was founded
in 1957, Vaneigem joined it in 1961 and left it in 1970, two years
before its official dissolution. Likewise, the Traité du
savoir vivre à l'usage des jeunes generations was NOT published
in 1968, but in 1966. Actually "Zorzan"'s surname is
Zerzan, and the Italian title of Time And Its Discontents is Ammazzare
il tempo [Killing Time], not "Apprezzare il tempo" [Appreciating
Time]. Again, Zerzan is not "of the same school" of
Bey: the former is one of the "primitivists" which Bey
charges with absolutism. Zerzan DOESN'T talk about temporary autonomous
zones, and anyone who says that they both are right is an obnubilated
person.

At best, Vecchi and Quattrocchi superficially read the book. At
worst, they can't tell a libertarian discourse from a mere reactionary
delirium.

In the meanwhile, A Ruota Libera was cited on several zines and
influenced the whole debeyte... Even professor Georges Lapassade,
the prestigious anthropologist, was sighted waving a copy of the
book during a conference!

Before I cover how the media reacted to the scam and some idiots
in the radical scene freaked out, I want to state that this prank
doesn't need a "political" concluding postscript. This
operation was an attempt to forge the passage between theory and
practice. There are too many charlatans all around, guys who try
to sell miraculous remedies for the "crisis of the end of
the millennium". Humanity will not be happy 'til the last
"layc intellectual" will be hanged with the guts of
the last hezbollah. What? I'm running the risk of making enemies?
But what "me" are you talking about? The name of Luther
Blissett may be adopted even to bash my face in, and anyone can
use it. Humans understand themselves in the process of psychic
warfare. Forwards to a world without poseurs!

C. Terror in the underground

"Let the throbbing flyers become impatient,
we'll calmly bring them back to the ground, back at the humble
level at which we ourselves may ascend. We are unsuitable to any
heroism and prefer irony to lyricism. We feel forced to warn the
most impetuous ones: don't play Phaeton!"

Amadeo Bordiga, 1952

By chance, the A Ruota Libera prank clashed with other events
pivoting on the circulation of Bey's books in Italy. Milan-based
ShaKe Edizioni, often described as the "official" pushers
of Bey's dope in the "bel paese", began indulging in
the most trivial conspiracy paranoia. Therefore a light-hearted
and playful prank has been perceived as a base assault. But my
prank was not a character assassination of Gomma and Raf Valvola
nor had it a "fratricidal" purpose. I don't believe
in the stalinist pedagogics of "false friends", and
what's more I don't imagine I can aim at such an easy target (just
a few months ago I kicked the shit out of Mondadori,
the most corporate of Italian publishers. Two weeks after the
prank I'm describing, I've attacked the Bologna District Attorney,
the local ecclesiastic authorities and a rightwing paper by a
scam on Satanic cults and black masses). I don't intend to bear
the blame of Gomma's behaviour: ShaKe did all they could to fall
into ridicule.

Is it my fault if I found out that the ShaKe edition of Radio
Sermonettes (Via Radio, 1995) had been censored? They cut out
a sentence against Che Guevara ("...that Rodolfo Valentino
of red fascism") which is both in the original text and in
the competing (i.e. better) edition by Salerno-based Edizioni
Ripostes (Immediatismo, 1995). It appears that ShaKe didn't want
to piss off the average leftist reader. When the matter came to
light, ShaKe said that Bey had given them leave to cut out the
passage. If this was true, the author would cut an extremely sorry
figure, having complied with leftist moralism and created a gaudy
discrepancy between the different versions - for abstract reasons
of political time-serving.

Is it my fault if those champions and "experts" of
anti-copyright, as well as Bey himself, threatened to apply to
the bourgeois legal system in order to prevent an "unauthorized"
publication of Bey's Pirate Utopias by Ripostes? While they were
attacking Castelvecchi and "Belletati" for having copyrighted
free texts, they threatened Ugo Scoppetta Adelfio, Ripostes' translator
of Pirate Utopias, and Alessandro Tesauro, the owner of that small
publishing house.

ShaKe used to say: "WE are in the 'Movement', THOSE PEOPLE
aren't", which was fucking absurd: first of all, there's
no such thing as a "movement" pedigree, nay, there's
no such thing as a "movement"! Secondly, if it's a matter
of "street credibility" (...and it isn't), Adelfio is
a notorious anarchic prankster, friend of Canadian neoists like
Gordon W., involved in the Luther Blissett project. Likewise,
if one is really against copyright and the private property of
ideas, he won't claim any "patent". O boy, I can't help
fully exposing this storm in a teacup!

***

Summer 1995: Ripostes announced they were going to publish
Adelfio's translation of Radio Sermonettes. According to some
informers, ShaKe got pissed-off and hastily translate the same
book. November 1995: bookstores got the two editions on the same
day! Peter Lamborn Wilson a.k.a. Hakim Bey sent an undated fax
to the Salernitan guys:

"Dear Ugo & Romano (et alii), ...thanks for a marvellous
job on Immediatism - It's very weird to me to be taken seriously!
- I wish I could read the apparatus criticus..."

I got a copy of this by Ugo. At the beginning of 1996, Gomma
& Co. were told that Adelfio was translating Pirate Utopias
as well. They contacted Wilson and urged him to intervene. Wilson
sent another undated fax:

"Dear Ugo... please communicate with ShaKe in Milan because
they are also working on Pirate Utopias!!! Talk to Goma [sic]
or Sid. I'm sorry this confusion arose. Maybe you can work together!
Sid just started work on translating..."

I got a copy of this by ShaKe. (They made a lot of stuff public
in order to claim their exclusive "right"!) Anyway,
at that moment, Ugo was aware that ShaKe had cut out a passage
of the book, so he didn't want to cooperate with any of them.
On April 24th, Wilson sent a fax to ShaKe:

"Dear Sid & Goma [sic]... you can tell [Adelfio]
- or anyone - that you are the only authorized translator and
publisher of Pirate Utopias in Italy. Any other translation or
edition is unauthorized & I will take legal steps to prevent
its appearance or sale..."

Consider that the text we're talking about is anti-copyright!
After ShaKe received this, they forwarded it to Ripostes attaching
a similar threat. At last, Adelfio sent a fax to Wilson:

"Dear Peter... Our intents are not connected to copyright
and we want to stigmatize the disquieting behaviour of neo-copyrightist
paranoid Italian publishers. We don't want to start a merchandising
war. Our intentions are clear, the cure for our version of Immediatism!
demonstrates it. [The omission of your definition about Che Guevara]
shows what they really are: red fascists, ther usual passe' expression
of Italian leftist hegemonical cultural control disguised as
alternative cyberpunk!... For this reason we did not want to
cooperate with them... Are you a sponsor of the neo-copyright
movement?".

Wilson never replied. In plain words, Bey was ready to bring
to court people whose only fault was having "taken him seriously"
and put into practice all the 1990's idle talk on anti-copyright.
Accidentally, they had found out Wilson's opportunism (stalinoid
self-censorship - I hadn't gone so far!)

Again, is it my fault if ShaKe didn't realize that A Ruota
Libera was a fake? Those guys used to brag of their direct link
with Hakim Bey or pontificate as if they knew the Internet like
the back of their hands...And yet they didn't notice that "the
original English versions of these texts, which circulated only
via E-mail" (as "Belletati" wrote) simply DON'T
EXIST! Why didn't they ask to the supposed author? Why didn't
they search for the texts on Alta Vista, Yahoo and the likes?
No, Sir, they only wanted to slander, calumniate, backbite Castelvecchi
and Adelfio, insult "Belletati"... They FORCED me to
con them, so I contacted Luther Blissett of the Nottingham Psychogeographical
Unit and proposed him to play "Belletati". He began
to write and/or ring up Gomma, obnoxiously trying to tranquillize
him, then insulting him. Gomma would wail over that behaviour,
that's why everybody kept believing "Belletati" to be
a real person ("Who the fuck is this Belletati? His letters
are total crap! He's gotta be mad!"). Every complaint by
Gomma became a further pound of shit thrown in the fan.

D. The scam exposed

"...A little more like Italy where only drivers
who sharpen their skills survive."

Jello Biafra, 1987

The previous three sections of the text you are reading are
an English translation of the communique by which I revealed my
scam in the second week of July 1996. I sent it via fax and snail-mail
to as many zines as I could, then put it in digital form on many
BBSs and mailing lists. I sent it to the press as well. Many "post-cyber-anarcho-situ-hippie-punk-bullshit"
clap-trap leftist poseurs in the "alternative scene"
freaked out, many more started laughing and haven't yet stopped!
When the first article appeared on a national newspaper ("Una
beffa a ruota libera", by Loredana Lipperini, on La Repubblica,
7/20/1996), some said that "the dirty linen of the movement
shouldn't be washed in public" (which sounds like a sort
of Mafia ideal). The most stupid victim of the prank, that is
Angelo Quattrocchi, got totally out of control. Soaked in his
lofty anti-tech dream, he was the only journalist who didn't bump
into my communique. Someone passed on him a copy of Lipperini's
article, which he got as the only gateway to my prank. Instead
of taking the piece as a secondary source, he assumed that was
an anti-communist scam by his colleague, indeed, a vile provocation
by "the bourgeois press", maybe favoured by Luther's
verbal incontinence.

On Wednesday, July 24th "Liberazione" published an
ultramoronic article by Quattrocchi [entitled "C'e' Stalin
in un testo underground e allora 'La Repubblica' gode" =
"La Repubblica is excited in finding Stalin in an underground
text"]. Geez! Quattrocchi wrote that A Ruota Libera was not
fake and attacked both Lipperini (whom he also mispelt as "Lipparini")
and Blissett for "having craped in his nest" (uh?!)!
On the following day, Lipperini replied and demolished Quattrocchi:
"[...] Everyone approved at the prank
on Mondadori. Should everyone take offence now that Luther
has given a blow to counterculture? This is an unpleasant signal
[...]". Two days later, "Il Manifesto" published
a whole-page article on the prank by Alberto Piccinini [entitled:
"La beffa e le miserie di Lee Mortais" = The prank and
the poverty of Lee Mortais], which exposed the whole matter of
censorship, anti-copyright, conformism etc. The article contained
this passage: "[this prank] is a further proof of Luther
Blissett's fascinating and admirable capability of keeping his
"fifth columns" [i.e. spies] in the media".

Many "representatives" of the Italian "radical
scene" said that my prank was "beneficial", at
least "useful" in order to destroy "some putrescent
mechanicisms of myth-making and literary criticism" (S. Dazieri).
On August 9th, during an interview on the public radio, Bifo criticized
some aspects of the prank but added that "Blissett's operation
is extraordinary". As to ShaKe, they reacted bearing a deep
grudge against "me". Gomma was sighted in a Milan social
centre yelling: "I think I know who had a hand in this! I'll
smash their faces in!". Well, "we" can physically
humiliate him at any moment. Choose your seconds and come tomorrow
at 5 o'clock behind the graveyard. I've chosen (and already used)
the weapon: your touchiness.